MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

4/26 Lineup & Soriano

Guess who’s back in the leadoff spot? Alfonso Soriano was at the top of the Cubs’ order on Sunday for the series finale against the Cardinals. “We said we’d try it and we did,” Lou Piniella said of Soriano, who struck out three times on Saturday. “We’ll just put him in the leadoff spot. That’s where he feels comfortable, and that’s where we’ll leave him.”

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Who’s playing 3B? You have both Miles and Fontenot listed at 2B. Also, why do you use the word “was” when you describe the lineup before the game has even started? “Is” seems better. Soriano can’t have already been in the leadoff spot before the game started. I guess I’m just being finicky, but “was” bothers me when you use it before the game has even started.

mczajkow@iwu-it bothers me too, but not as much as the confounding moves by Hendry. We have to choose are battles, I’ll cut Muskat some slack…maybe she used “was” because she too, deep in her Cubbie soul knows that Hendry can trade Soriano for um…Jacque Jones! or even um… Craig Monroe! Or both!!!!BEFORE THE GAME EVEN BEGINS. You never know with Hendry, after all he IS a GENIUS!!! It would be just like Hendry to trade a player he acquired that belongs in the American leauge for TWO players that belong in the American Leauge AND are washed up!! Pure genius waiting to happen, that’s our GM!

Acquiring Miles was as bad an idea as retaining Hendry
as the GM. General Manager? or Garbage Mover?
However, Miles is not THE problem nor is he even A problem,
THE problem is the holes Hendry created this season with his incredibly inept trades and signings.

You people are ridiculous. Do you people actually watch games or look at stats or even understand the game of baseball at all? How can you people be frustrated with an above-.500 team in APRIL!?! I admit that some of Hendry’s moves have confounded me, but the complete lack of patience of you people in a 162 game season! We have FIVE MONTHS of baseball left to play!

Uh, lack of paitence? I would rather wait 5 years if the Cubs
would just decide to invest in young talent, let it develope and take hold, similar to the Marlins. The only lack of patience I have is with Hendry’s “must win this year” approach he seems to take every year, leaving us stuck with long term contracts for players that our handicapping the teams future. He goes out year after year and gets the “free-agent” savior that will lead us to the promised land. Soriano, Fukodome, Bradley. This team has to be built properly, with a PLAN, not a hit or miss approach of catching lightning in a bottle. I don’t know if it’s Hendry or his scouts but that’s where my patience grows thin.

I don’t care what the record is with Soriano in the leadoff spot. He shouldn’t be batting there. So what if he struck out 3 times when he wasn’t in the leadoff spot. He strikes out plenty when he does lead off. Theriot should be leading off or even Fukodome, someone with a clue about the strikezone and isn’t hitting for the fences everytime. Watching Soriano swing at curve balls in the dirt gives me bad flashbacks to the days of Shawon.

Shawon…oh boy. I have finally conceded that we have to deal with yet another confounding Hendry move in Soriano.
I’m past all the COMMON SENSE AND LOGIC. The guys is a head case and the only way we’ll get any decent production from him is aqueous to his desire to lead off.
At least Therriot is a good enough, fundamentally sound, disciplined hitter that he can contribute in any spot in the order. It would be nice to have Soriano bat 3,4 or 5 for the RBI potential but he doesn’t have the mental capacity.
And we have him for what? Another 5 years? Way to go
Hendry.

In today’s Tribune, Phil Rogers grades Henry’s offseason moves and vindicates mine and all fellow Cubs fans’ thoughts on how confounding and BAD Hendry’s moves have been. I mean any GM that signs a right fielder free agent in consecutive seasons is doing SOMETHING wrong.
And to justify moving the previously signed right fielder (Fukodome) to center field becuause he has GOOD defensive skills doesn’t make him a CENTER FIELDER. Besides, it’s only Hendry’s ineptitude at finding (whether from inside or outside the organization) that created the vacancy in center field to begin with. Rogers makes some astute points regarding DeRosa, Bradley and Marquis. The same points that I and others have expressed in this forum.
My compliments to Phil on his frank commentary regarding a high ranking position in the Cubs management.

In my last comment I meant to refer to Hendry’s ineptitude at finding a genuine centerfielder. And I didn’t mean to include ALL Cubs fans as sharing my thoughts regarding Hendry, I meant all the Cubs fans out there that do share my frustration with Hendry and are more than ready to usher in a more competant GM.

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